The Brimstone Murders
( Jimmy O'Brien - 2 )
Jeff Sherratt
Jeff Sherratt
The Brimstone Murders
CHAPTER 1
PENAL CODE SECTION 187: Murder is the unlawful killing of a human being with malice aforethought.
Robbie Farris was in jail. He’d be there a long time and there wasn’t a whole-hell-of-a-lot I could do about it. His professor was dead and there wasn’t a whole-hell-of-a-lot I could do about that either.
I threaded my way up the Santa Ana Freeway heading for the L.A. County Jail, going at a good clip until a couple of lunkheads, discussing their fenderbender on the side of the road, had traffic snarled all the way back to the 710. They were hammering away at each other, but a few quick jabs from the bigger guy seemed to quell the debate. I crept by in my five-year-old ’68 Corvette, steaming. My pants were pressed, shirt only worn once, shoes halfway shined, and I was even on time, but now the traffic would make me late-again.
My client Robbie Farris-charged with section 187, one count-was waiting at the jail. He wasn’t going anywhere. But I hated being late. I’d have to do better with these minor imperfections. Racking my brain, I could only think of a few, but the peccadilloes were part of my personality, and we wouldn’t want to change that. My main fault-if it was a fault-had to do with women. The first thought that crossed my mind when I met a woman, any woman, young or old, was what it would be like to sleep with her. I don’t mean to imply that I’m obsessed with sex, and sex certainly isn’t obsessed with me. But when you are thirty-five and divorced, a healthy male with an active libido, isn’t thinking about sex normal? Contrary to my married friends’ fantasies, bachelor life isn’t all that thrilling. It’s just lonely.
It was a hot Monday morning in October, about nine a.m, and the prisoner I was assigned to represent, in all likelihood, would be behind bars until the new millennium. It wasn’t that I was such a lousy lawyer; in fact, I was damn good. It was just that Robbie Farris committed the crime, murdered his college professor, and now-after his conscience kicked in-demanded that I let him plead guilty.
After I’d agreed to take the case three days ago, I had a short phone conversation with Robbie. And after listening to his incoherent babble, I hung up and phoned the judge, Hissoner Abraham J. Tobias, the guy who assigned the case to me. I asked for a continuance of the arraignment, or to be more accurate, I begged. The judge gave me an additional two days, until next Wednesday.
From my discussion with Robbie, I gleaned that he had found Jesus. I guessed he figured he could score a few brownie points with the Lord by admitting his deed in open court. I tried to persuade him it wasn’t such a good idea. I told him it would be better to try to score a few brownie points with a jury, then if God wanted him to do life in prison, He’d let the jury know. What could that hurt? But Robbie was adamant and now my role would be to see that he got the best possible deal.
I figured, after meeting with Robbie this morning, going over the details of the arraignment and listening to his mea culpa for as long as I could handle the self-flagellation, I’d head over to the D.A.’s office and try to arrange some kind of plea bargain. But getting any kind of deal might pose a problem. When arrested, Robbie had been screaming, “God, take my wicked soul and cast it into everlasting damnation, for I have sinned. I have killed Professor Carmichael.” It was all on tape, and with a statement like that ringing in everyone’s ears, I wouldn’t have much to dicker with. The D.A. would know they’d have a slam dunk. Especially since, in addition to the taped confession, Robbie’s bloody fingerprints were all over the knife found at the scene. But protecting my clients’ rights and providing the best defense possible-for the guilty as well as the innocent-was my job, and I always did what I could.
According to the police report, the professor had been stabbed twenty-seven times. The first one, slicing his heart, killed him instantly. Robbie’s other stabbings were afterthoughts, a little something to remember him by.
After signing in at the Central Jail’s attorney entrance and being patted down, I was escorted along a dingy tile-lined hall and shown into an austere, cinderblock room reserved for lawyer/client conferences. The room had a single metal table and two chairs in the center. The table was bolted down, but the chairs were free to move about. Fluorescents flickered overhead, casting the room in a ghostly bluish hue. A strong smell hung in the air, the mingled odor of industrial strength disinfectants, cleaning soaps, and human anguish.
The guard, an L.A. County Sheriff’s deputy, a black guy with a cookie-duster mustache, gave the table a good shake, demonstrating its immobility. “Hey, O’Brien,” he said. “Don’t want shysters like you walking off with the table.” His face was filled with a tooth-flashing grin.
“The name’s Jimmy, but you can call me Mr. O’Brien,” I answered, pulling out a rusty steel chair and sitting down. “Hey, sport, chair’s not bolted down. Might be just the thing for my apartment. Goes with the rest of my stuff, ‘Early Incarceration.’”
“I don’t know what’s worse, you criminal defense lawyers, or your clients. One in the same, you ask me.”
“Nobody’s asking. How ’bout you go get my guy, okay, Flip?” Flip Wilson, a comedian, was the primetime rage of the moment, and without the mustache, the deputy had a strong resemblance to the TV star.
Within ten minutes, Flip returned with my client. Another guard accompanied him, a heavy white guy bulging out of his uniform. One more donut and bam, buttons would fly.
There was no mirth between Flip and me this time. It was routine, just the perfunctory securing of chains strung around Robbie’s torso to eyebolts embedded in the concrete floor. Robbie appeared washed out; his pallor had the patina of dry cement and unlike most young guys his age, he was lifeless and numb. A tall, lanky kid of nineteen, he had mousy hair, trimmed around the temples but long on top, the tip of which fell forward and curled into his gray vacant eyes. He wore the customary white jumpsuit with L.A. County Jail stenciled in India ink on the back. There were no pockets or belts for obvious reasons, and the jumpsuit was designed as a one-size-fits-all model. In Robbie’s case, the designer had failed. Robbie’s forearms dangled out of the sleeves. These jail guys have no sense of style, I thought, as I sat there looking sharp in my mod bellbottom slacks and tattersall polyester sports coat.
After a few moments of Robbie murmuring eerie prayers of contrition, bowing and raising as much as the chains would allow, I got down to business.
“Why, Robbie? Tell me why you did it.”
Robbie turned and stared at me, blinked once, and without an ounce of emotion said, “He was a heathen.” A chill hovered in the air.
“You killed him because you thought he was a heathen?” I asked.
“He had no right to life. Life is a gift from God, and he had to die.” Robbie’s demeanor was as cold as the steel chair I sat on. “He wasn’t a Christian.”
“He was Catholic,” I said, taking a wild shot. I wasn’t sure if the professor was a Catholic or not, but with his Irish name, it had to figure.
“That’s what I mean.”
“I’m Catholic,” I said. “You want to stab me, too?”
“If I was told to stab you, I would.”
“Someone told you to stab the professor?”
“Yeah.”
“Who?”
Robbie dropped his head and intently scrutinized his hands, folded on the table. “My friend, the only one I can talk to,” he finally answered.
So that was it. There was an accomplice. It could be a woman, maybe not. But whoever it was, it might be someone I could hang this on. Someone who was manipulating this poor unfortunate soul.
“Your
friend told you to stab the professor?” I asked.
“Yes, he did, Mr. O’Brien. He told me in a loud and clear voice. He said Carmichael had to die.”
I leaned closer. “Who is your friend?”
“The Lord.”
CHAPTER 2
“Amazing grace! How sweet the sound that saved a wretch like me…”
My jailhouse conference lasted less than five minutes. After admitting the stabbing at the behest of the Lord, Robbie, his eyes rolling, climbed back into his bowing and scraping mode and started to sing. There was no point in sticking around. ‘Forgive me’ wasn’t part of any criminal lawyer’s lexicon, and I had to get out before it started to rub off.
Regardless of how Robbie felt, it was obvious his mental capacity was diminished, and he wasn’t the one who should be making decisions about how he was going to spend the rest of his life. From the report, I learned that Robbie was an only child whose father had been killed in a car wreck years ago. His mother lived out in the San Fernando Valley, somewhere way out in the Valley, almost to Ventura. After stopping at the D.A.’s office, I’d go see her, make the drive on the hot and crowded Golden State Freeway all the way to a dusty region barely in L.A. County, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Chatsworth.
Why did Robbie have to stab the guy at a time when the temperature outside was a hundred degrees? And why did his mother have to live out in the Valley where the smog was thick and the air was as sticky as blackstrap molasses? Why couldn’t the guy’s mother live at the beach?
The D.A.’s office was located in the new Criminal Courts Building downtown, a typical government structure. And, like the people housed inside, it was gray, utilitarian, long on function but short on imagination. Steve Webster, the Deputy D.A. assigned to the case, was no exception in the imagination department. But after an hour of saying no to every creative proposal I came up with, I felt I was finally wearing him down.
“C’mon, Steve, let’s get this thing over with. The guy’s loony-tunes, for chrissakes. We’ll plead not guilty by reason of insanity. You can warehouse him in some state hospital…”
“No way, O’Brien. He could miraculously be cured; he’d be back on the street.”
Steve sat behind his metal desk, which was painted gray-but of course, everything in the building was painted gray, as gray as the law I was trying to invoke. If Robbie had been insane at the time of the crime, then he wouldn’t go to jail. Then again, if he happened to be in his right mind, he wouldn’t have stabbed the guy. Yeah, the law had its Catch-22, and at times I felt like Yossarian, a little paranoid and thinking everyone is crazy.
Steve sat there shaking his head. Maybe this wasn’t going to be as easy as I thought. Then suddenly, he dropped the bomb. “Your client has priors.”
“What? There is nothing in the report about any prior convictions.”
“Sealed. Juvie stuff, drug-related…”
“I don’t believe it. My guy’s a holy-roller.”
“You’d better believe it. I saw the sheet,” he said.
“Hey, Steve, that proves my point. He got whacked on acid as a kid, and now he’s totally out of it. Not responsible.”
“Won’t fly, O’Brien. Robbie Farris wasn’t diminished when he signed up for his GED at Golden Valley College. Where the good professor taught, I might add, before your client turned him into sushi.”
We came to that moment in every negotiation when both sides, refusing to give up points, sat and stared at each other. How long the staring would continue depended on several factors, not the least of which was the stubbornness of the combatants. Women were much better at this phase of negotiating than men. It wouldn’t surprise me a bit if Barbara, my ex-wife, still sat there staring at the spot where I had been sitting when she unceremoniously asked me to leave the house and never return.
But, of course, one way to break the logjam was to change the subject. I glanced around the room, taking in the functional furniture, the filing cabinets, and Steve sitting there with a dismal look on his face.
“Hey, Steve, your tie isn’t gray.”
He dropped his chin, glanced down and fingered his coffee-stained knit tie. “It’s blue. So what?”
Now, back to the negotiation. “Got a deal for you. We’ll get this case behind us.”
“What about my tie? You don’t like it? Shit, look at you…”
“I’ll plead my guy not guilty, insanity. You hold off requesting a trial date until a shrink checks him out. If he’s nuts, you accept the plea. Sound good?”
Webster stopped fiddling with his tie and looked up. “And, if he’s sane, sane in the legal sense of the word?”
“Then we work out a new deal.”
“You’re the one who’s nuts, O’Brien. If the shrink says Robbie Farris is sane, then he pleads guilty.” Webster paused for a moment, making a steeple with his fingers, flexing them in and out.
“Okay, it’s a deal,” I said. “At the arraignment, we’ll ask the judge to postpone…”
“Not so fast, O’Brien.”
Uh-oh.
“We use the county shrink,” he said.
This was going better than I figured. It was obvious Robbie wasn’t in his right mind when he killed Professor Carmichael. Any competent doctor would see that. But I had to nail this down before Webster changed his mind.
“No deal, Steve. We use an impartial guy. No county doctors.” I didn’t give a damn about the doctor. I just didn’t want to appear that I was too eager, or a pushover.
“Costs money,” he said.
“Cheaper than a trial.”
“Okay, O’Brien. I’ll go for it. I’ll make the motion at the arraignment, but no tricks. No last minute complications. Capish?”
“Aw, Steve, trust me. Have I ever…but there is one small thing…”
“There you go. Goddammit, O’Brien, same old bull pucky.”
“Calm down,” I said. “I just have to flag the deal by his mother. Need her approval. Don’t worry, I’ll nail it down.”
The Deputy D.A. peered at me in silence. His eyebrows formed a distrusting V, and there was skepticism in his eyes.
“It’s a formality,” I said.
“See that she goes along.”
The drive out to Chatsworth, bordering Ventura County on the far side of the San Fernando Valley, killed what remained of the morning. Steve Webster supplied the unlisted phone number, and I had called Hazel Farris from a payphone in the lobby of the court building before I left. After about forty rings, a boozy voice answered and confirmed that she was Robbie’s mother. She agreed, reluctantly, to a meeting. I told her I’d be there in a couple of hours.
The directions she gave over the phone made no sense, but after digging out my moldy, five-year-old Thomas Brothers and wasting ten minutes jumping from one page to another with no apparent logic to the map book, I finally found her street. At least I found it in the book. She lived off a side street called Larkin outside the city limits of Chatsworth in an isolated area of Los Angeles County. After cruising up and down Topanga Canyon Boulevard looking for Larkin and spending another fifteen minutes trying to find her place, I finally pulled into a trailer camp straight out of the thirties.
These were no holiday getaway jobs. Cobwebs stringing the wheel wells, the flat tires, and the expired license plates told me they hadn’t been moved in years.
I knocked on a few doors, but only one guy answered. He told me how to get to Hazel Farris’ unit. She lived in a beat-up Airstream parked at the end of a dirt road that weaved through the camp, the last one by the exit. Her trailer was hunkered down in the center of a weed-infested patch of dirt. It rested on a haphazard scattering of cement blocks acting as a feeble foundation. The trailer’s oxidized aluminum siding was torn in spots and peeled back like a castoff rusty tin can. In fact, the whole trailer looked like a big old tin can, a can of Spam, the large economy size.
I slid out of my Corvette. To the distant sound of a barking dog, I trudged through the weeds
to what I perceived to be the front door cut in the side of the Airstream. I rapped on the flimsy tin, not too hard, not wanting to knock the trailer off its blocks. I waited and was just about to knock again when the door opened a crack. A bloodshot eyeball peered at me through the opening.
“Whaddya want?”
“It’s me, Mrs. Farris, Jimmy O’Brien. Remember I called?”
“You’re the lawyer man, the guy supposed to be helping Robbie?”
“Yes…”
She opened the door a little bit more, her eyes flicking from side to side. “Get in here fast, before they get you!”
“Who?” I said, glancing around.
“The spooks, you numbskull.”
She scraped the security chain across the slot, unlatched it, and banged open the door. With a quick movement of a withered, liver-spotted hand, she grabbed my shirt and pulled me inside.
“You’ll be safe in here,” she said, staring at me with wild eyes, her body pressed flat against the door.
The interior wasn’t much of an improvement over the outside, worn and used up, and the place smelled like a wet dog. Her decorator wasn’t schooled at the Boutique d’Interieur; more like Boutique d’Garbage. But what caught my eye were the empty whiskey bottles littering every flat surface. Mrs. Farris took a little nip now and again.
She was maybe fifty or so, but it was hard to tell with alcoholics. The red and purple spider web capillaries covering her face masked her age just as effectively as cosmetic surgery masked women on the other end of life’s spectrum. Her green eyes had lost their luster and she was a little heavy now, but before the bottle took over her life, she could’ve been a knockout. She had a certain air about her; maybe it was the way she looked at me when she fingered her thin, flower-pattern housecoat clinging loosely about her voluptuous figure. She had the essence of a woman who in a past life knew what sex was about and how to use it. She turned and moved away from the door, leading me deeper into her lair.
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